Surprise, Anger, and Obsessive Thought: The Secret Agent

The chapter takes up The Secret Agent (1907) and looks at the typical concatenation of emotions manifested by the six main characters when their sense of security is threatened by an unexpected event in a ‘world of contradictions.’ The chapter begins with a brief discussion of literary irony and the specific irony implicit in the narration of the heterodiegetic narrator. It then analyzes the emotional propensities of each pair of character by comparing and contrasting the two characters of each pair in a specific emotional context: the first in the context of indolence and intransigence, the second in the context of security and insecurity, and the third in the context of selflessness and selfishness. The chapter concludes that a close examination shows that there is a human tendency to follow a typical sequence of emotions—from surprise to anger, and from anger to obsessive thought.